Driving a Ferrari isn’t an ordinary event. Forget the romance: the thing takes forever (figuratively speaking) to warm up and come into its own, and it doesn’t fit in too well with ordinary life, which usually involves packing things in the boot and taking them from one place to another amid a sea of SUVs whose trailer hitches are about midway up your windscreen. The one thing that needs to come standard with a car like this is a car very much not like this, and if you ask the local tifosi sure enough you’ll find they have a BMW or a Cayenne parked in the other garage (or the other, other garage). At some point, though, you’ve stared at the thing enough that you’ve actually begun to wear the paint with your gaze, and that’s where your Ferrari comrades come in. It’s time for a drive – and not an ordinary drive.

The week prior, though, I had noticed a small puddle of pretty green fluid under the car. The coolant expansion tank is easy enough the check – it’s located on the left side of the car in the rear corner – and the level looked within spec with no obvious leaks. As luck had it, I had to go away on a 4-day business trip to Chicago, and spent the whole time imagining that on my return the house would be flooded with spilt coolant. Fortunately it wasn’t and the garage floor was dry on my return, but a lunchtime trip to Gary Bobileff’s shop revealed a loose hose clamp that was the culprit. During the examination, however, he also found a smaller hose between the expansion tank and the engine that was in its death throes. Cost of the hose was $9, but the intake plenum had to be removed.

After an hour’s work, and with a couple of clamps thrown in, the bill came to $109. With the cooling system pressure-tested and healthy, she was back on the road.

A dozen of us arranged (via FerrariChat.com) to meet for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Rancho Santa Fe – a postal code brimming with exotics. We picked another hot summer day in San Diego for this drive, with temperatures over 90 degrees inland, and over 80 by the coast. Turnout was impressive, with a dozen Italian machines including everything from a new F430 Spider, 360 Challenge Stradale, a striking silver 360 Modena, a newly acquired F355 Spider, a 348 TS, my 328 GTS and two Lamborghini Gallardos – one a new Spyder – whose owners enjoy latching onto our social network. The Ferrari/Lambo rivalry is worse on paper and online: in real life, the owners all love to drive – and briskly.

The drive started off as a bit of a slog. Southern California has some beautiful coastal roads, but these are hardly a big secret and so the first leg of our run was stop-and-go traffic – mostly stop. In an ordinary car, you would turn the air conditioner up a notch, fidget with your CDs or make a call on your mobile phone. In an open-topped Ferrari, you can play with the air conditioner all you like, in the hope that there’s a REALLY-TRULY-WE-SERIOUSLY-MEAN-IT MAXIMUM setting you’ve somehow overlooked. But there isn’t, so a four-minute wait at a congested intersection isn’t the sort of thing you want to do often. The mid-mounted engine runs even warmer when stopped, and the 190-degree air behind you doesn’t all stay behind you. The owners’ manual won’t say it, but if you haven’t bought a few nice looking T-shirts you might look into it, and leave anything wool at home.

Idiosyncrasies aside, though, the 328 behaved superbly. The temperature gauges stayed where they ought to, convincing me that the $109 had been wise investment. In fact, none of the cars in our caravan experienced any technical issues that day.

The clutch is light compared to most exotics, and the 3.2-litre engine has ample torque, making 1st and 2nd usable gears in slow traffic. Still, it was a relief to reach California Highway 56, a pristine stretch of pavement that runs east-west, for the second leg of the drive (see the accompanying photograph.) Northbound on Interstate 15, where the speed limit is 65 miles an hour, I’m aware of too many people distracted by the moving column of Ferraris: slowing down to have a better look, or speeding by to prove that an Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer is in fact faster than a 360 Challenge Stradale. Next, we exit and take the Del Dios Highway, which provides scenic canyon runs and leads back into lovely Rancho Santa Fe. Afterward, several of us met back at Firenze for a debriefing and to congratulate the owner of the F355 Spider on his maiden voyage.

The 328 performed admirably. It is an old car, but with all of the critical bits (fuel lines, brake lines, cooling system) replaced in recent years it never missed a beat. The top end of the car is 150 miles an hour, and although we topped 120 miles an hour for a brief stretch I’m confident she would reach 150 on an open road. A sixth gear would be welcome – you won’t be having a phone conversation in a 328 at speed. And while the wind buffeting is impressively low, even at 120 mph, the exhaust roar would be punishing on a cross-country journey.

The seats, on the other hand, are extremely comfortable on an extended drive – provided your backside is sufficiently narrow. (If women have their small toes lopped off to wear Jimmy Choos, I’m sure there’s a Beverly Hills surgeon who can work wonders on Ferrari owners’ pelvises.)

Fuel economy was wretched, possibly due to running the air conditioner while idling in stop-and-go traffic, or perhaps because the engine tempts the driver into high revs. With dual nine-gallon tanks, the fuel gauge moves around quite a lot and it’s best to simply reset the trip odometer when you fill the car. Figure 10-12 mpg from those 18 gallons and manage from that.

A 328 is a serious sports car, with a rawness you won’t experience in any modern production car save the superb Lotus Elise/Exige. For a 50-mile mountain drive, the Ferrari is an unparalleled, visceral experience, with the added benefit of impressing the valet when the drive is done. It can be used about town, but then again an Armani suit can be worn to go collect shells on the beach: best to get one of the Ferrari grand tourers for driving about town.

On the other hand, sometimes there’s something to be said for being the best-dressed guy on the beach…